Arriving home one evening, Peter Dean was greeted by the words, ‘You’ve got a daughter’.
Somewhat puzzled by his partner Sarah’s proclamation, given it was hardly a secret he’d had a child from his previous marriage, he replied: ‘I know I have a daughter: Leah.’ ‘No,’ she replied, handing him a piece of paper. ‘You’ve got another one.’
It’s a scene worthy of the familiar drum beat that accompanies cliffhangers on EastEnders, the show where Peter made his name playing market trader Pete Beale in the 1980s and 1990s.
Yet this revelation came with a modern twist. Because the printout that suddenly changed his life was from Ancestry.com, a DNA-tracing website that allows users to submit a saliva swab to be compared with all other samples submitted to the site.
Though a recent development, sites such as Ancestry have already created a new frontier when it comes to family dynamics; thanks to the irrefutable genetic information they provide, affairs have been revealed, killers apprehended — and unknown children discovered.
In his hallway, Peter, 82, had to sit down as he tried to absorb the shock that there was a woman out there, in her 50s, who shared half his genetic make-up. A woman who, until that moment, he had no idea existed.
Peter Dean found out he had a daughter, Demi Marrese (both pictured), 59, he never knew about after sending a sample to DNA-tracing website Ancestry.com
‘I couldn’t take in what Sarah was telling me at first,’ he recalls.
‘My mind was whirling, remembering women I’d had relationships with and wondering who on earth might have kept this information from me for all these decades. I knew it had to be real, there’s no disputing DNA.
‘Then Sarah asked what I was going to do. There was a phone number for the woman on the website. I said: ‘I’m going to call her.’ ‘
So, he dialled the number for one Demi Marrese and said: ‘Hello, I’m Peter Dean and I think we’ve got something to talk about.’
After hearing what he had to say Demi, who had not checked her Ancestry account in months, asked for a few minutes to look.
‘She called me back 15 minutes later and said ‘Yes, I think we do’, which was a bit sharp,’ recalls Peter, laughing teasingly in Demi’s direction as father and daughter — who share an uncanny physical resemblance — sit side by side, telling me their remarkable story.
‘Getting that call and then seeing the results online was both terrifying and exhilarating,’ says Demi.
‘I’d spent so long wondering who my dad was and, to be honest, given up hope of ever finding out.
‘I was also scared of being rejected; when it happens more than once you develop a protective skin, so I called him back with trepidation.’
For Demi, 59, her connection with Peter is something she’d been desperately searching for over decades.
Following her birth in April 1962, Demi was fostered, aged six weeks, and then adopted by a childless Greek-Cypriot couple, a tailor and a dressmaker, who raised her in North London — where Peter spent much of his adult life — without ever telling her she was not biologically theirs.
She enjoyed a happy, loving childhood. But when she was 18 and visiting family in Cyprus, a relative who felt she deserved to know revealed the devastating truth.
‘I was so shocked. I had to rethink my childhood and everything I’d been told, or assumed, about my family and how I fit into it, which was shattering,’ she recalls.
‘I just remember asking: ‘Do you know who my mum is?’ over and over. But all anyone knew was that my biological mother was from a Greek-Cypriot family and my father was recorded on my adoption paperwork as ‘English lad.’ ‘
Peter Dean, who played Pete Beale (pictured) on EastEnders in the 1980s and 1990s, said when he was told, had to sit down as he tried to absorb the shock
Demi waited until she returned to the family semi in Enfield before confronting her parents.
‘I asked them lots of questions and all my mum said was: ‘We adopted you when you were a baby, we love you, you’re our daughter. That’s how we’ve always thought of you, so there was no need for you to know,’ ‘ she says.
‘My dad joined in, telling me: ‘You’re my daughter, that’s all that matters.’ ‘
With the subject clearly causing her parents distress, Demi felt unable to bring it up again, and decided she couldn’t put them through the pain of trying to find her biological parents.
However, four years later, while married to her first husband, Demi gave birth to a son, Alex, now 37, who has WAGR syndrome (Wilms tumor, Aniridia, Genitourinary problems).
A very rare genetic condition, it causes developmental delays, urinary issues and means he has no irises.
As she struggled to cope with the demands of a severely disabled child, Demi’s need to understand her own genetic history became overwhelming.
So in a desperate hope, she hired a private detective, who helped trace her birth mother to another area of North London.
‘My friend and I called all the people with her surname in the phone book until we found her,’ Demi recalls.
‘We chatted on the phone and she seemed pleased to hear from me, so I arranged to meet her.’
However, her mother turned up late, setting the tone for the handful of future meetings they had over the next two decades in which, Demi says, it was made clear she wasn’t interested in a close relationship.
She discovered her mother, who went on to raise two more children, had been 17 when she was born.
After being sent to a mother-and-baby unit, her unmarried status saw her pressured to put Demi up for adoption.
‘I’d had this idea that I would meet my biological mother and it would be wonderful because we’d have so much in common but it wasn’t to be,’ says Demi.
‘She didn’t want to know, nor did my half-siblings, which was hard to deal with.
‘I asked her about my biological dad many times but she would never talk about him, always promising to tell me ‘another time’.’
But that didn’t stop her being curious, with the need to discover him growing stronger after her adoptive father died of cancer in her 20s.
With so little to go on it seemed impossible. Yet three years ago, when online sites offering testing and family trees became commonplace, Demi ordered a kit, sent off her swab and waited.
At first, there was nothing. But in early 2020, just ten miles away in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, Peter was encouraged by a friend to send his own sample to discover more about his ancestors.
‘My intention was to find out about my heritage — my mother was Italian and my father English — never in a million years did I think I might have a child out there,’ says Peter, who lives with Sarah, 48, his partner of 20 years.
After learning about Demi, Peter racked his brains before alighting on a 58-year-old memory, from when he was in his early 20s.
Walking home along London’s Caledonian Road, a girl standing at the top of steps in front of a five-storey house had called out ‘Evening!’ to him.
‘We got chatting and I asked her to come down the stairs to talk to me but she said she couldn’t, I assumed because her parents had said she had to stay on the steps, before asking me to join her.’
For Demi (pictured when she was aged around two or three), 59, her connection with Peter is something she’d been desperately searching for over decades
To spare his daughter’s blushes, Peter describes how a kiss and a cuddle must have led to ‘Demi’s conception’.
Though he admits worrying that without contraception he and the girl had played ‘Vatican roulette’, he never saw, or heard, from her again, going on to marry in 1966, with his younger daughter Leah born in 1967.
‘I’m sad about all the years with Demi I’ve missed out on. However, discovering, aged 80, that I had a second daughter felt like winning the Lottery,’ he says, dipping his head to hide the tears welling up.
‘We get on well, we talk a lot on the phone and text one another between times.
‘Unlike me, Demi has a lot of responsibilities, for her son, her mother and her granddaughter, so I just say: ‘When you’re free, let me know.’ I don’t want to add any pressure but I realise, at 82, I’m running out of time.’
‘Ah, don’t say that,’ says a visibly moved Demi, placing a comforting hand on her father’s arm.
While, two years since that bombshell phone call, they seem relaxed in one another’s company, both admit to being ‘very nervous’ before their first meeting at The Plough pub in Enfield a few weeks after Peter’s call.
Demi confesses she was bracing herself for further rejection. Meanwhile Peter feared she may be furious with him for her inauspicious start in life.
‘For all I knew she might have wanted to meet so she could slap me across the face,’ says Peter.
‘I arrived early but she was even earlier and, as I crossed the road, her mate Maria — I told her to bring a friend so she wasn’t meeting a strange person alone — pointed and said: ‘There he is!’
‘It was a relief because it saved me having to wander around looking at women and thinking: ‘Is that my daughter?’ ‘
Peter, an outgoing, tactile man, didn’t hesitate in hugging Demi, who admits to leaving most of the talking to Maria while she stared, in stunned silence, at her father.
Although Demi is olive-complexioned, there are definite similarities in the shape of their noses, eyes and mannerisms.
That Demi had unknowingly watched her father on EastEnders for years provided a further twist.
After they first spoke, she had Googled Peter’s name, but when his acting profile came up she merely assumed it was a common name.
When he confirmed, during their next call, he was the actor, it stirred up complicated emotions.
‘Watching EastEnders was the last thing Alex and I would do before his bedtime during those years that Peter was in it,’ she explains.
‘It’s so strange looking back and thinking that the actor playing Pete Beale was actually my dad.
‘Now when I look at photos of him when he was younger I can see a definite resemblance — my cousin is always sending me pictures of him she finds online and saying: ‘He looks so much like you here, that’s your stare!”
While Demi might be within her rights to criticise the youthful Peter’s cavalier attitude towards contraception, she feels no resentment towards him.
‘He didn’t know about me, so I can’t possibly hold it against him that I spent decades wondering who my biological father was,’ she says.
‘I’m just happy to have finally found him.’
The pandemic has prevented them meeting regularly, but there have been several lunches at The Plough since and walks in nearby Trent Park and Waltham Abbey.
Peter has also met Demi’s painter and decorator husband, daughter Tia, 32, son Salvatore, 16, and granddaughter Lexie, nine, who has made Peter a great-grandfather for the first time.
Actor Peter (pictured aged two or three) is now trying to make up for lost time with his new-found family. Demi said Peter’s partner Sarah has ‘welcomed me with open arms’
Although Demi says Sarah has ‘welcomed me with open arms’, she is yet to meet Peter’s daughter Leah, 54.
‘I didn’t find it hard telling Leah about Demi, I’ve always been the type to say whatever I need to say,’ he says. ‘They’ve not met but I hope they will.’
Demi’s adopted mum has dementia, so she has decided it would be too confusing for her to learn about her discovery.
Meanwhile Peter is trying to make up for lost time with his new-found family.
‘The first time I met Tia she ran up to me as I was getting out of the car and gave me a kiss,’ he recalls.
‘I didn’t know at first who she was, I thought it might have been an enthusiastic fan, but it was lovely to discover she was actually my granddaughter.
‘I speak to her and her daughter Lexie, who calls me grandad, on the phone and buy them and Demi little trinkets, necklaces and bracelets, nothing fancy.
‘Demi will say: ‘You shouldn’t have’ but I tell her ‘I’d have spent a lot more on you over the years if I’d had the chance to bring you up.’ ‘
Peter feels certain that, had he known about Demi, his parents would have happily raised her.
However, though he feels cheated of those years, he realises there’s little point in thinking ‘what if?’
On Father’s Day last year, Demi presented Peter with a card, in which, to his delight, she called him ‘Dad’ and a mug bearing a photograph of the two of them.
And on Demi’s 59th birthday, Peter bought her a ‘belated birthday card’ that read ‘Happy 1st birthday’.
He has also, belatedly, kept up the family tradition started by his father of giving all newborn babies in the family a tube of Smarties.
‘Generations of Dean kids still have these Smarties, but Demi’s son ate hers,’ he laughs.
Peter is convinced his late father played a part in bringing him and Demi together.
‘I’ve had a few heart problems and there was a time, about three years ago, when I felt very unwell and was convinced I was dying,’ he says.
‘I was lying in bed one night when suddenly I felt like I was floating up and saw my dad lying across the ceiling.
‘He pushed me back down and said: ‘No, you’ve got more to find.’ I had no idea what he was talking about but then, a year later, I found out about Demi.
‘It hasn’t been easy for her, she’s had a hard life and experienced rejection, which, as her father, I’d like to have been able to protect her from.
‘But now I know about her, I’d never dream of walking away.’
